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Lobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit. The nation deserves a more thoughtful approach, one that recognizes that Americans want, and deserve, to live in a place where air and water are clean, where soil and natural resources are conserved for future generations, and where health and safety – not merely profit – stand atop the hierarchy of public values.

The popularity of Oscar-nominated “Food, Inc.” and writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman make it clear that consumer interest in food and farming issues is now deeply embedded in the cultural mainstream.

The current focus on deficit reduction has government leaders scrambling to find places to make significant cuts. Congress and the President are currently grappling with what to do about farm subsidies – namely the nearly $5 billion direct payment program that pays farmers and landowners year after year regardless of circumstances, and the federal crop insurance program that costs taxpayers between $6–to–$8 billion a year.

For just a little while, it looked like a great day for Iowa agriculture and the environment. On Aug. 30, delegates to the Iowa Farm Bureau annual policy conference in Des Moines passed a historic proposal to tie their heavily taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance to good conservation practices.

Yesterday (Sept 19), president Obama unveiled his plan to cut the federal budget. Part of that plan entails cuts to lavish farm subsidies paid out to mega-farms regardless of need, and cuts to the bloated and taxpayer subsidized crop insurance program.

At a time when the agriculture economy is white-hot, sending government checks to mega-farms that don’t need the money is indefensible. But that hasn’t kept leaders of the agricultural community from arguing against cuts in farm subsidies now that those inequitable handouts are, at last, squarely in the federal budget cutters’ cross-hairs.

Ask almost anyone engaged in US agriculture policy, and the consensus is that the current budget crisis makes it all but inevitable that the suite of taxpayer-funded programs authorized under the federal farm bill is headed for dramatic cuts. The subsidy lobby is worried that the newly minted “Super Congress” might actually decide which programs have fat to trim or are non-essential.

Last week, the corn lobby posted a blog that abruptly declared its independence from so-called “advanced biofuels.” This announcement made it painfully clear that corn ethanol will never gain America independence from our dangerous oil addiction and that the evolution of advanced biofuels is near non-existent.

When the federal government skimps on food safety, especially inspections, people can get seriously ill and in some cases, die. That’s why Congress can’t afford to underfund the landmark bipartisan food safety law.

By Craig Cox and Sheila Karpf The corn lobby has persistently sold misguided subsidies and mandates for corn ethanol as a bridge to the "next generation" of so-called "advanced" biofuels. The conventional wisdom was that infrastructure built to support inefficient and environmentally damaging corn ethanol would eventually benefit the nascent advanced biofuels industry.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is moving to help out farmer in drought-striken areas by giving them the option to cut hay and graze livestock on land that had been taken out of production through the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP.

When there’s trouble in the sandbox, kids are likely to point at each other and say, “He did it.” As we get older, most of us mature to the point where we’re able to accept responsibility for the problems we cause and say, “I’ll fix it.”

On July 18, EWG released a report on how the food we eat affects our bodies and the planet. We called it a Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change + Health. In it, we shared our findings about 20 popular foods and how their cradle-to-grave climate impacts compare. To go along with our sorta geeky lifecycle analysis, we put together some tips and tools for all the eaters out there who just want to pick the right stuff – that’s good for their health and good for the environment.

Over the past year, industrial produce growers and pesticide makers have made much ado about EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which assembles federal testing data on many fruits and vegetables and makes it easy for consumers to see which have the most pesticide residues – and which have the least.

It’s a huge and comprehensive piece of legislation that drives federal spending and policies on agriculture, nutrition and conservation programs. In just one year – 2010 – farm bill programs spent $96.3 billion. How those dollars are used makes a big difference to our health and the environment.